ISTANBUL, April 18 (Reuters) – Turkey’s central bank kept
interest rates and banks’ reserve requirements on hold on
Wednesday but warned it may have to tighten market interest
rates more frequently to head off risks to inflation from higher
oil prices.

The bank for the first time this year refrained from
tinkering with a complicated policy mix aimed at taming
inflation while avoiding a collapse in growth.

But its statement again struck a hawkish tone, saying it
would not allow inflation to worsen on the back of fuel costs -
crucial for a country that imports most of its oil and gas -
which it warned will push up prices in the short term.

“The committee will not tolerate temporary factors to have
an adverse impact on the inflation outlook,” the bank’s monetary
policy committee said in a statement after its monthly
rate-setting meeting.

“Accordingly, it was underscored that additional monetary
tightening may be implemented more frequently in the forthcoming
period.”

As a result, the lira rose against a dollar/euro basket
to 2.0674 from 2.0700 late Tuesday.

The lira recovered from early lows against the
dollar to stand around 1.7902 to the dollar in late trade,
virtually unchanged from late Tuesday.

Some traders interpreted the allusion to additional
tightening measures as a signal that the bank was ready to use
liquidity management tools to induce more frequent surges in the
cost of lira funding to support the currency.

The central bank had returned to its policy of tight
liquidity management last week in support of the lira after the
currency fell close to the sensitive level of 2.10 against the
dollar/euro basket.

“This policy may eliminate an excessive lira weakness, yet
by itself it would not help the lira appreciate unless global
risk appetite improves,” said Nilufer Sezgin, economist at
Ekspres Invest.

The central bank kept its key one-week repo rate unchanged
at an all-time low of 5.75 percent, where it has been since
August. Overnight lending rates stayed at 11.5 percent, and the
overnight borrowing rate at 5 percent, with required reserve
ratios (RRRs) on lira and foreign currency deposits unchanged.

All 10 institutions polled by Reuters had expected the bank
to leave its key rates and RRRs on hold and as significant was
its decision to keep lira funding – which is has used to prop up
the currency – steady in the coming month.

The policy rate has become less significant since December
when the central bank began funding the market through more
expensive intraday repo auctions on days deemed “exceptional”,
notably whenever the lira currency appeared vulnerable.

The bank has focused on managing the exchange rate in its
struggle to bring inflation down to 6.5 percent this year from
current levels of just over 10 percent.

Worried that raising official interest rates could worsen a
slide in economic growth later this year, the bank has opted to
use liquidity management tools to bolster the lira.

After losing close to a fifth of its value against the
dollar last year, the lira has bounced back just over 6 percent
so far this year.

The bank said it would continue to use that flexible
approach and kept funding for its ordinary short-term repo loans
to banks steady at 1-6 billion lira and a ceiling of 5 billion
lira on monthly loans.

(Members of parliament from the ruling AK Party (AKP) and Republican People's Party (CHP) scuffle during a debate on the school reform act at the parliament in Ankara March 30, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer)

Turkey’s ruling party pushed through a school reform act on Friday that provoked brawls among parliamentarians and mass protests by secular Turks and teachers, who said the law was pushing an Islamic agenda and would lower education standards. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan sent shudders through the secular opposition earlier this year when he said his goal was to raise a “religious youth.” Earlier this month, his AK Party sprang the surprise proposal to overhaul the education system.

Education has been one of the main battlegrounds between religious conservatives – who form the bedrock of AKP support – and secularists since soldier statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Turkish republic in 1923. Believing that religion was holding back Turkey, one of Ataturk’s first acts was to close madrasas, religious schools. Admirers of Ataturk say the AK Party is rolling back policies hurtful to pious Muslims.

The changes approved on Friday included measures that will allow schools specialising in religious education combined with a modern curriculum, known as imam hatip schools, to take boys and girls from the age of 11 instead of 15, and to provide optional classes in Koranic studies and the life of the Prophet Mohammad in other schools.

The law stipulates that children should complete 12 years schooling, though critics say the overall quality of education will suffer as parents have the option of putting their children into technical colleges grooming them for low-paid blue-collar and service industry jobs, like hairdressing for girls, from an early age.

Opposition anger over the bill boiled over when the AK Party steamrollered it through the committee stage, provoking brawls in parliament earlier this month.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s ruling party pushed through a school reform act on Friday that provoked brawls among parliamentarians and mass protests by secular Turks and teachers, who said the law was pushing an Islamic agenda and would lower education standards.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan sent shudders through the secular opposition earlier this year when he said his goal was to raise a “religious youth.” Earlier this month, his AK Party sprang the surprise proposal to overhaul the education system.

Education has been one of the main battlegrounds between religious conservatives – who form the bedrock of AKP support – and secularists since soldier statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Turkish republic in 1923.

Believing that religion was holding back Turkey, one of Ataturk’s first acts was to close madrasas, religious schools. Admirers of Ataturk say the AK Party is rolling back policies hurtful to pious Muslims.

The changes approved on Friday included measures that will allow schools specialising in religious education combined with a modern curriculum, known as imam hatip schools, to take boys and girls from the age of 11 instead of 15, and to provide optional classes in Koranic studies and the life of the Prophet Mohammad in other schools.

The law stipulates that children should complete 12 years schooling, though critics say the overall quality of education will suffer as parents have the option of putting their children into technical colleges grooming them for low-paid blue-collar and service industry jobs, like hairdressing for girls, from an early age.

Opposition anger over the bill boiled over when the AK Party steamrollered it through the committee stage, provoking brawls in parliament earlier this month.

Passage of the bill through the assembly was never in doubt, and it was carried by a vote of 295 to 91.

Critics have long accused the AKP of promoting religious conservatism by stealth, though Erdogan denies having an Islamist agenda.

Opponents fear he has become bolder since a commanding election victory last June secured him a third consecutive term.

MATTER OF CHOICE

Erdogan says the new law gives people what they want, unlike the previous education regime which alienated many conservative families who want their children to have more access to religious schooling.

Turkey’s staunchly secular military had forced that legislation on the country’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, before forcing him from office in 1997, in what became known as the “post-modern coup”. The military had overthrown three other governments between 1960 and 1980.

The AKP government has cut the military’s power and influence using reforms meant to strengthen Turkey’s democracy, and also weeded out judges in the senior judiciary who had backed the generals, many of whom are now in prison facing coup plot charges.

Erdogan says secular-minded families will not have to send their children to classes on religion.

“Nobody is forced (to attend),” Erdogan said on his return to Ankara from an overseas trip on Thursday as police unleashed tear gas and water cannon on protesters from a teaching union.

“Are people going to drag members of the labour union to those classes, punching and kicking? No. Are people going to drag kids into those classes? No.”

Some teachers say that regardless of the debate over the place of religion in the classroom, education desperately needs massive investment in more classrooms and more teachers, as half the country’s 74 million people are under the age of 28.

The quality of Turkey’s education compares poorly with OECD averages, according to a World Bank study.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A well-known Syrian dissident walked out of reconciliation talks in Istanbul on Tuesday aimed at demonstrating that Syrian opposition groups can provide an effective alternative to President Bashar al-Assad.

The opposition groups were invited by Turkey and Qatar, which holds the rotating chair of the Arab League, to the talks to try to form a common front in the one-year uprising against Assad.

More than 300 dissidents listened to an opening address by Turkish Foreign Ministry official Halit Celik at the seaside hotel in Pendik, a suburb on the Asian side of the city.

“Turkey will not leave the Syrian people to their fate,” Celik said. He said there was no alternative except for Assad’s regime to go, and extended support to the Syrian National Council (SNC) umbrella group, as a platform for different strands of the opposition.

Opening proceedings were interrupted by Haitham al Maleh, a liberal Islamist and grand old man of the opposition, walking out of the hall after SNC president Burhan Ghalioun set out an action plan that called for greater unity.

Maleh, a former judge now in his 80s who has been jailed by both Assad and his father, said he was quitting the meeting because the SNC had assumed too much dominance and failed to let other activists have their say.

His walkout heralded expected fierce debates over the strategy to overthrow Assad, as well as on calls for reform of the SNC, delegates said.

The SNC’s action plan, which included raising international backing, and support for peaceful protests, went further by proposing that it should help organize and arm the rebel Syrian Free Army, established by army defectors, to resist Assad’s security forces, and raise money to pay recruits.

Ghalioun also called for backing for the one-day meeting to end with a “national oath”, committing all the opposition to building a democratic state, without any agenda for revenge, and to seek reconciliation once Assad is removed.

A draft declaration said the new Syria will be “civic, democratic and totally free”, with a transitional government to organize a ballot to elect a founding assembly to draft a new constitution.

“The Syrian people are proud of their cultural and religious diversity. Everyone will contribute in building the future,” it said.

Some delegates complained that though the SNC has more than 300 members, only a handful take decisions and that while all sectarian and ethnic groups are represented on the executive, that was little more than tokenism.

“The executive council will have to do something to show it is listening to people,” said a diplomat observing the meeting. “There is a feeling it is not transparent or democratic enough.”

SOME DISSIDENTS WITHDRAW

A few leading dissidents, including Maleh, withdrew from the SNC in recent weeks, dismayed by its leadership and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which draws support from Syria’s Sunni majority. This disunity has fed fears that Syria’s agony will not end if Assad is pushed out, and the country could slide into sectarian and ethnic conflict, giving pause to governments which would otherwise be glad to see Assad’s downfall. Turkey hosts a “Friends of Syria” meeting of mostly Western and Arab foreign ministers on April 1 to try to agree measures to persuade Assad to call off his security forces, permit inflows of humanitarian aid and allow a political transition. Whether they are in the SNC or not, main opposition figures will also attend, a Turkish official told reporters on Monday.

Opposition disunity is unsurprising, given that political life in Syria has been choked by 42 years of Assad family rule.

“This is a learning process in the politics of opposition,” the Turkish official said. Ghalioun, a Paris-based secular professor of politics, was chosen in October as a consensus candidate to hold the presidency for an initial three months, and has held onto the position despite strong criticism of his leadership. His attempt in December to draft an accord between the SNC, made up mainly of exiled dissidents, and the National Coordination Body, a centrist bloc inside Syria, was rejected by the SNC executive council. Ethnic Kurdish delegates also complained over the way the SNC was run. They said the notion of a civic state was too woolly, and favor commitment to a secular state that recognizes women’s rights and the place of Kurds in Syrian society.

ISTANBUL, March 27 (Reuters) – Syria’s fractious opposition
groups begin reconciliation talks in Istanbul on Tuesday aimed
at demonstrating they can provide an effective alternative to
President Bashar al-Assad.

The opposition forces have been invited by Turkey and Qatar,
which holds the rotating chair of the Arab League, to talks in
Istanbul to try to form a common front while their homeland
suffers under Assad’s brutal repression of a year-old uprising.

About 300 dissidents attended the welcome dinner at a
seaside hotel in Pendik, a distant suburb on the Asian side of
Istanbul, and more were expected to join what the Turkish hosts
call an “open house” meeting on Tuesday.

Burhan Ghalioun, president of the main opposition umbrella
group, the Syrian National Council, has sought support for the
reconciliation meeting to end with a “national oath”, committing
all the opposition to building a democratic state, without any
agenda for revenge, and to seek national reconciliation once
Assad is removed.

“Based on the national responsibility on all the political
powers in the Syrian revolution and the efforts to unite the
opposition and its vision, we declare the basic principles that
the new state will be based upon,” a draft declaration said.

It said the new Syria will be “civic, democratic and totally
free”, with a transitional government to organise a ballot to
elect a founding assembly to draft a new constitution.

“The Syrian people are proud of their cultural and religious
diversity. Everyone will contribute in building the future,” it
said.

SOME DISSIDENTS WITHDRAW

A few weeks ago, a handful of leading dissidents withdrew
from the SNC, dismayed both by its leadership and influence of
the Muslim Brotherhood, which draws support from Syria’s Sunni
majority.

This disunity has fed fears that Syria’s agony won’t end if
Assad is pushed out, leaving governments which would otherwise
be glad to see his downfall hesitant over how to engineer an
endgame without an acceptable alternative in place.

Turkey hosts a meeting of foreign ministers from “Friends of
Syria”, grouping mainly Arab and Western governments, on April
1, with the hope of agreeing measures that could persuade Assad
to call off his security forces, permit inflows of humanitarian
aid, and allow a political transition.

Whether they are in the SNC or not, main opposition figures
will also attend, a Turkish official told reporters on Monday.

The official also stressed that his government’s role in the
opposition gathering was purely to facilitate the meeting,
though it urged unity.

“We have been talking to almost every figure in the SNC,”
the Turkish official said. “They have to take everybody on board
to show they are representing every walk of Syrian society.”

Ghalioun, a Paris-based secular professor of politics, was
chosen in October as a consensus candidate to hold the
presidency for an initial three months, but he has held onto the
position despite strong criticism of his leadership.

His attempt in December to draft an accord between the SNC,
a group containing a large number of exiled dissidents, and the
National Coordination Body, a centrist bloc inside Syria, was
rejected by the SNC executive council.

Liberals and other Islamists are unhappy with the influence
the Muslim Brotherhood wields in the SNC, while ethnic Kurdish
leaders have shunned the group.

Syrian Kurds were attending the reconciliation talks as were
several of the dissidents who had earlier quit the SNC to form a
rival Syrian Patriotic Front.

The difficulties coming together were unsurprising for a
country where political opposition has been throttled by 42
years of Assad family rule.

“This is a learning process in the politics of opposition,”
the Turkish official said.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Osman, the 16-year-old son of an Istanbul central heating engineer, reckons he is at the ideal school – one where a quarter of the 40 hours he spends a week in class is dedicated to becoming a better Muslim.

He is a credit to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s goal of raising a more pious generation through school reform proposals to be debated in parliament next week. But the secular opposition is up in arms, even to the point of fisticuffs.

What is more, Osman goes to the same school Erdogan attended as a boy, the Imam Hatip High School in Fatih, a humble, conservative neighbourhood where the large numbers of Islamic beards and veils stand out.

The education minister went to the same school there too, as did the current mayor of Istanbul – who also belongs to Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The unremarkable five-storey dull pink block amid Fatih’s narrow lanes was one of the first Imam Hatip schools, founded in 1951, to teach future imams.

They subsequently evolved into institutions that offered parallel mainstream curricula, and graduates could earn admission to university. Privately funded by foundations these schools often have better facilities than state counterparts.

“It’s perfect,” says Osman, enjoying a chance to practice his English as he stands with half a dozen friends on the school dormitory steps.

“We learn everything here. We would learn the other subjects in a state school, but the religion part would be missing,” he said, smiling broadly beneath the thin wisps of a budding moustache, a common feature among imam hatip boys.

His friends expressed similar feelings. They wanted to become engineers, doctors – only one wanted to be an imam – but felt more comfortable learning in a religious setting.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the soldier statesman who founded the modern Turkish republic out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago, believed religion was holding Turks back.

As a result of his secularist policy, Islam was kept out of classrooms and madrasas were closed. It was only with the advent of a multi-party system that imam hatips were opened.

Even today, Ataturk’s “Address to Youth”, a militaristic call to protect the country adorns the walls of state schools, and, whereas there are no morning prayers, primary school children still recite a patriotic pledge each day.

The pledge, coined in 1933, reads; “I am a Turk, honest, hardworking. My principles are to protect the younger, to respect the elder, to love my homeland and my nation more than myself. My ideal is to rise, to progress. May my life be dedicated to the Turkish existence.”

None of the boys spoken to at Erdogan’s old school talked about politics, though imam hatip old boys wield an extraordinary amount of influence, considering how small a minority they are in society.

Huseyin Korkut, president of the Association of Imam Hatip Graduates and Members (ONDER), an alumni group that Erdogan belongs to, said nearly 40 percent of cabinet ministers had attended imam hatip schools.

Yet, with roughly 300,000 pupils attending around 540 schools, less than 2 percent of Turkey’s 18 million school children go to these schools.

QUALITY NOT QUANTITY

Earlier this month, Erdogan’s ruling AKP bulldozed a draft bill through a parliamentary commission that, among other things, will help imam hatip schools like Osman’s flourish by letting them take boys and girls from the age 11 instead of 15.

Given the AKP’s majority, it will almost certainly be passed by parliament’s general assembly.

Though the AKP bill stipulates that children should complete a total of 12 years education, up to the age of 18, critics say the changes will not address the fundamental issue of quality.

Everyone agrees on the need for change. Despite advances made in school attendance levels in the past 15 years, a World Bank study in 2010 showed only 16 percent of the 15-year-olds in Turkey attend schools with average reading, maths or science test scores that are comparable to or above an OECD average.

When the TUSIAD industrialists group weighed in on the controversy by doubting whether the draft legislation would produce a “well-educated, pluralist, liberal society”, Erdogan told it to mind its own business.

The AKP did drop some of its most contentious proposals from the initial draft, notably a provision allowing parents to withdraw their children from school at the age of 11 so they could opt for distance learning from home.

Critics said it would have harmed girls’ education, particularly, and potentially lead to more child marriages in backward, traditional communities in Turkey.

Removal of the home learning option has left opponents’ anger focused on the provision that allows parents to put children in vocational schools at the age of 11.

While imam hatip schools fall in this category, so do technical schools providing classes in car maintenance, child care, hairdressing and the like. Critics say it is too early for children to be making career choices with lowly aspirations.

“It’s obvious that AKP’s core motive with this draft is to boost the number of imam hatip schools and students, in line with Erdogan’s desire to raise pious generations,” Mehmet Bozgeyik, general-secretary of the Education and Science Workers’ Union told Reuters.

“REVENGE FOR 1997″

In February, Erdogan sent shudders through secularists by declaring: “We want to raise a religious youth”.

Turkey, a Muslim country of 74 million, is politically polarised over the place religion should hold in society and the state, and some of the fiercest battles between the two camps have been fought over education policy.

Indeed, the bill is designed to erase a piece of legislation that is hated by the AKP – the Compulsory Education Act of 1997. That act made it mandatory for children to attend 8 years of continuous schooling, in a state system devoid of religion.

On February 28, 1997, a military that had overthrown three governments since 1960, launched what became known as Turkey’s “post-modern coup, to press Turkey’s first Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to quit.

One of the measures foisted on Erbakan that day was the closure of imam hatip school classes for children under 15. The number of pupils at these schools subsequently fell from around 600,000 to less than 60,000 in the following years.

Speaking on the 15th anniversary of the “post-modern coup”, Erdogan, who had been a rising star in Erbakan’s party before it was banned, railed against what some called social engineering. “Those who made the February 28 changes to prevent Turkish youth from receiving religious education have greatly harmed Turkish students,” Erdogan said to waves of applause from party loyalists. “Education is no longer the guinea pig of certain segments in society.”

Already in power for a decade, the AKP has never been stronger. Erdogan won a third term in an election last year that saw him take 50 percent of the vote.

Judges and generals who once stood guard over the republic’s secular traditions have been either retired, been fired or, in the case of some generals, imprisoned on charges of plotting against the government. Police have also gone after secular educationists on similar grounds.

“They are trying to take revenge for 1997 and are abiding by their vow to abolish the Compulsory Education Law and turn back to religious education,” said one such educationalist living abroad, who still feared being identified in case it attracted the government’s wrath. “They feel that the time is now ripe.”

LACK OF DISCOURSE

ONDER’s Korkut saw the bill giving people what they wanted, and expected imam hatip numbers to swell, driven by demand from conservative Turkish families dismayed over popular culture’s erosion of traditional values.

“I think the problem is that Turkey is moving towards social degeneration, moving away from her own values,” Korkut said. “For example, Turkish television serials are broadcast in many Middle Eastern countries. But there are no references to religion in these television shows.”

Political opponents fear a manifold increase in imam hatip numbers will deepen the foundations of the AK support base for years to come and sharpen divisions in Turkish society.

“Never in Turkey’s history has there been a government which promotes or incites polarisation of the society as much as Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s,” Engin Ozkoc, a lawmaker from the People’s Republican Party (CHP), told Reuters.

During the commission hearings, Ozkoc, angry at the lack of public discourse over the bill, spoke in opposition for 12 hours non-stop, except for grudgingly granted bathroom breaks.

Faced with an obstructive opposition, AKP members on March 11 resorted to packing the small room where the commission hearings were held so that no CHP members could attend.

During the ensuing fracas, one news photographer caught a burly parliamentarian, with a hand at his throat, landing a punch on a rival’s chin. Inside the room, AKP members gave the go-ahead for the bill to be sent to the assembly for debate.

“Parliament has become a notary for the prime minister’s office,” the CHP said in a statement the next day.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Syrian refugees have crossed to Turkey in growing numbers in recent days, frightened by a government assault to drive rebels from the Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs, officials said.

During the past year Turkey has turned against former friend President Bashar al-Assad over his brutal crackdown, and fears of massacres in Syrian towns and cities that are centres of opposition to his rule.

Close to 12,000 Syrians were registered at the camps set up to provide refuge for them in Turkey’s southeast province of Hatay, after the arrival of around 800 during the past week, according to a Turkish foreign ministry official.

“After they saw what had happened in Baba Amr they were scared the same could happen to them. That’s why they’re trying to get out of the country,” the official in the provincial capital of Antakya told Reuters by telephone.

Syrians were crossing into Turkey at a rate of 150 to 200 a day, the Turkish official said, more than three times the rate seen most days since late last year.

Those figures don’t tell the full story as many people sneak in illegally to seek refuge with friends and relatives rather than enter the camps.

The influx is tiny compared with the half a million Iraqi Kurds who poured into Turkey to escape Saddam Hussein’s wrath during the 1991 Gulf War. They returned only after Western powers, along with Turkish contingents, set up a safe haven on Iraqi territory.

Turkey has signalled that only if refugee flows approached such high levels might it consider discussing a similar safe haven on Syrian soil. But such an action would be fraught with hazards, since it could involve some form of military presence.

“FRIENDS OF SYRIA”

But Turkey opposes the involvement of Western allies in any action in Syria, and instead wants Arab countries to take a lead. Speaking during a visit to Tunis on Thursday President Abdullah Gul said: “Turkey is against intervention by any force from outside the region. Such an intervention could be subject to exploitation.”

During the coming weeks, Turkey is expected to host a second meeting of foreign ministers from the “Friends of Syria”, grouping mostly Arab and Western governments, to follow up on talks in Tunis last month aimed at finding ways to rein in Assad.

“There are many, many people coming now – with babies, with children, women. They are coming because they are afraid of the Syrian army,” said one Syrian man at the Boynuyogun refugee camp, a couple of hundred metres (yards) from the Orontes river dividing Syria and Turkey.

The 38-year-old man, who gave a false name to avoid reprisals, had fled across the river several months ago to escape the violence in his hometown of Jisr al-Shughour, but says he regularly sneaks back to take food and guns to friends still there.

“The army is shooting at anything, at shops, at people, anything,” he told Reuters by telephone. “People are telling me that military commanders are telling their soldiers to fire on anyone.”

He said water and electricity supplies to homes had been cut off, and mobile telephone services shut down.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Thursday Russia and Iran would soon realise they had little choice but to join international diplomatic efforts for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

He acknowledged, however, the divisions in the Syrian opposition and its lack of preparedness to take power, saying it must create a structure that embraces all segments of society.

“This transformation will no doubt take time.”

Turkey has been in the forefront of fostering the Syrian opposition since abandoning its long-time ally Assad over his violent crackdown on protests. The opposition Syrian National Council meets in Istanbul and the ‘Free Syrian Army’ operates from Turkish soil on the Syrian border.

Turkey and Western and Arab allies were angered by Russia’s vetoing, along with China, of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Assad’s use of force, which has intensified in past days with a siege against the city of Homs.

“We have to wait and see how long Russia will be able to take upon itself the burden of this regime,” he told Reuters in an interview. “In my opinion, it won’t be very long.

“In the time of the Cold War, such things happened in a very closed environment. However, today developments take place in the open.

“I think in time Russia will see its support has been abused by the Syrian regime. They will recognise this fact when they see the heavy weapons being used against the people in Syria. That is not very tolerable, not even for Russia,” he said.

Russia has continued to supply arms to Syria as protests have grown, with the formation of rebel military units, into something approaching civil war.

Defeated Syrian rebels pulled out of the city of Homs on Thursday after a 26-day army bombardment, but fighting continues across the country. Sources say arms are being brought into Syria for the opposition forces by non-government parties.

A TRAP

Russia and China moved a step towards joining international action on Thursday when they joined other Security Council members in expressing “deep disappointment” that Damascus had refused to allow U.N. humanitarian aid chief Valerie Amos into the country.

In vetoing the resolution, Russia had argued that both sides of Syria’s conflict should be condemned for the violence, not just Assad’s government.

The Turkish presidency is not executive and most power in the country rests with the prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan. However, Gul commands great personal influence and plays a central role in foreign policy.

Gul said Ankara was talking to Iran, a close ally of Assad, in an effort to persuade it to accept the inevitable and back diplomatic action against Assad.

“Even Iran doesn’t have the power to make water run uphill … And if the worse scenario were to come true, it is not possible that Iran could not feel any responsibility for that. It will be responsible.”

He said Russian and Iran should be persuaded by the international community and countries of the region to persuade the Syrian government to accept reality and stop the crackdown. He cited the ‘Yemeni Model’ as the most reasonable option as a way out for Assad.

In Yemen, president Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped aside, under pressure from Gulf Arab states, with guarantees of protection to allow an election for a new leader.

Gul has warned in the past of the danger of violence in Syria fuelling sectarian conflict that could envelop the entire Muslim Middle East.

“It’s a trap in the region, and similar incidents happened in the Middle Ages in Europe. The Middle East should not repeat these mistakes.

“We know that the danger is there, but awareness is also there.”

In Syria, any new administration must find ways of accommodating Sunni Muslims and Christians as well as the Alawites who have been the bedrock of Assad’s rule.

ANKARA (Reuters) – NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had no intention of intervening in Syria even in the event of a U.N. mandate to protect civilians, and urged Middle East countries to find a way to end the spiraling violence.

Rasmussen told Reuters Friday he also rejected the possibility of providing logistical support for proposed “humanitarian corridors” to ferry relief to towns and cities bearing the brunt of President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

“We have no intention whatsoever to intervene in Syria,” Rasmussen said in an interview, during a visit to mark the 60th anniversary of Turkey joining the alliance.

While NATO had acted under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians in Libya and had also received active support from several fellow Arab countries, neither condition had been fulfilled in Syria.

Asked if NATO’s stance would change if the United Nations provided a mandate, Rasmussen was doubtful.

“No, I don’t think so because Syria is also a different society, it is much more complicated ethnically, politically, religiously. That’s why I do believe that a regional solution should be found,” he said.

Thousands of civilians have been killed by Syrian security forces since an uprising against Assad’s rule began last March. The government says more than 2,000 soldiers and police have been killed by foreign-backed “terrorists.”

International powers along with the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League will meet in Tunis on February 24 as part of a newly-created “Friends of Syria Group” to look for a way out of a crisis that has raised fears of wider sectarian strife between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims.

DIPLOMACY

Turkey, a Muslim NATO member bordering Syria, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, has been at the forefront of regional efforts to persuade Assad to end the brutal repression and give way to protesters’ demands for more democracy and freedom.

Earlier this month, China and Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria that was partly based on an Arab League plan, prompting Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to accuse major powers of regarding Syria as a “bargaining chip.”

Iran is the Assad government’s other main source of support. Turkey has sought to play the role of “honest broker” between its Western partners and neighboring Iran, over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

ANKARA (Reuters) – The international community must send a strong message of support to Syrians under artillery attack from government forces, particularly the opposition bastion of Homs, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Reuters.

Turkey was ready to host an international conference to support the Syrian people, and to send a message to President Bashar al-Assad to halt an 11-month crackdown on his opponents.

History taught that leaders who fired on their own people did not survive, Davutoglu added in an interview shortly before he was due to leave for the United States for talks on Syria.

He said that if the U.N. Security Council failed to protect civilians, then like-minded countries should find ways to end the killing and deliver aid to civilians trapped by military assault, especially those in Homs.

“We definitely want to have this meeting in our region showing concerns and the sensitivities and solidarity and regional ownership, maybe in Turkey, maybe in another country,” Davutoglu said.

“It is not enough being an observer. It is time now to send a strong message to the Syrian people that we are with them.

“We are ready to help them, and (give) a message to the Syrian regime that they cannot continue these methods of oppression,” he said.

Davutoglu, fluent in Arabic and English, has emerged as a key diplomatic firefighter as Turkey, NATO’s most important Muslim member, exerts growing influence in a crisis-ridden region.

Turkey worked closely with the Arab League to help formulate a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria that was vetoed by Russia and China on Saturday.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who had described the veto as a “fiasco” also telephoned Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday to discuss the results of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s meeting a day earlier with Assad in Damascus.

Davutoglu said the U.N. Security Council should be taking action but the issue had become a “bargaining chip” among the five permanent members.

“What will be happening if thousands of Syrians are being killed every day? Now it’s hundreds, it is a very bad scenario,” he said.

STILL TIME FOR DIPLOMACY

Asked whether the escalating violence was nearing the point where Turkey would consider establishing a buffer zone inside Syria, or enforcing a humanitarian corridor, Davutoglu said: “Yes, we are very very worried… Now, it is hundreds of people are being killed daily.

“We are worried what will be happening next week, next month, and Turkey is directly concerned.”

He said Turkey was currently providing refuge for some 12,000 Syrians who had fled their homeland, but the people in direst need were those left behind.

“All the international community should work together to help Syrian people, especially those who are not able to come to Turkey, or go to Jordan or other countries.

“But especially those who cannot even go from one street to another street in Homs. You have pictures of children running from one house to another house while under artillery attack.”

Assad’s forces intensified their attacks on Homs after the Security Council resolution was vetoed, and the United Nations estimates that well over 5,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March last year. The Turkish prime minister’s office put the toll at more than 7,000.

Erdogan had cultivated Assad as a friend, but late last year called for him to step down, as the Syrian leader had failed to heed repeated advice to make urgent reforms and halt the crackdown.

Asked under what circumstances Turkish troops could be ordered onto Syrian soil, Davutoglu said that point had not been reached and military intervention in Syria was a matter for countries of the region and the international community.

“Now it is still time for diplomatic efforts, and we are using all diplomatic means,” he said.

Turkish officials have previously said Ankara could consider enforcing a buffer zone or no-fly zone in Syria, if there was a huge influx of refugees that threatened to destabilize the neighbor’s long border and put Turkey’s own security at risk, or if Assad’s forces carried out massacres in cities.

Davutoglu, a professor of political history, was unsure how long Assad could cling to power but saw an inevitable end.

“If a leader or regime fights against their own people, they cannot survive. This is the principle of history.”